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The Chump Lady Survival Guide to Infidelity: How to Regain Your Sanity After You've Been Cheated On

by Tracy Schorn (Goodreads Author)

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A Reader said: " If you read one book on infidelity, let it be this one.

Most folks who discover that their spouses are unfaithful suddenly find themselves caught up in insatiable investigation. When your world is entirely exploded by the unfathomable but real fact t If you read one book on infidelity, let it be this one.

Most folks who discover that their spouses are unfaithful suddenly find themselves caught up in insatiable investigation. When your world is entirely exploded by the unfathomable but real fact that the person you trusted most in the world, and to whom you made covenantal life-vows, has used you and abused your good faith -- well, then, you're very likely to experience a deeply disorienting period of massive instability.

If that's what brought you to this book, you can rely on it to tell you the hard, honest things about your situation that your friends, family, and most therapists can't bring themselves to articulate. Schorn applies the healthy insights derived at significant cost in the communities that support weaning oneself from codependence. She adds to that a clear moral voice that applies critical discernment to the behavior of the cheater and, sadly, what often results from the collusion of the trusting spouse.

Namely: Trust your instincts and intuition first. Realize that it's not fundamentally about you, but that cheating is a symptom of a character disorder. Accept that you didn't cause the cheating, you cannot change the cheater, and you cannot cure the behavior. And then, when that basic reality is taken on board, Schorn provides a direct guide to how to manage your own life with dignity and how to maintain boundaries.

There is wit, there are saucy words, there are memorable cartoons. But most importantly, the book is exactly what it names itself: A survival guide.

Most folks read many, many books and visit many, many internet sources searching for guidance to decode the Rosetta Stone of a cheating spouse's irrational, destructive, ethically bankrupt mentality. There is a light industry of publishing on the topic. Most of it is irrelevant at best, some of it is actively harmful at worst. For an example of the latter, consider the core of the Reconciliation Industrial Complex message, which sells the snake-oil of a faithful spouse's endless self-improvement to control/deter the cheating spouse's behavior, effectively placing the responsibility for the cheating on the faithful spouse. Sickness.

If you are confronting infidelity in your marriage/partnership, it's likely that you will read a lot of books on the topic. This book (unique in the current literature) is the best place to start.

Make reconciliation a choice that you make very carefully, not an assumption that you fail to interrogate, and use this book to help you get perspective on the real consequences of getting what you think you hope for. ...more "

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— Jul 15, 2014 11:32AM

Jul 15, 2014 11:31AM · see review